This report examines how, in a time when workers’ Charter-protected associational rights appear to be expanding, the rate at which governments interfere with collective bargaining has skyrocketed.
It specifically looks at Alberta’s ongoing use of secret bargaining mandates, which turn public-sector bargaining into a hollow and fettered process.
This report is relevant because both UNA and AUPE have exchanged opening proposals with the government in the last few weeks and will be bargaining against secret mandates. The government opener in both cases was, unsurprisingly, identical and there is a huge gap between what workers are asking for and what the government is offering.
Alberta Views recent published an article I wrote about the UCP's record on labour issues. The article reprises and extends a chapter I wrote with Susan Cake and Jason Foster in a new book entitled Anger and Angst: Jason Kenney's Legacy and Alberta's Right (which is also worth a look).
The nub is basically that UCP labour policy can be best understood as an effort to shift the cost of labour from employers to workers by grinding wages and working conditions. The effect, particularly on and in Alberta's public-sector has been significant. Since the Alberta View's article is open access, I'll leave it for you to read more if you like.
CBC recently ran a very interesting first-person account from a Calgary welder about his experiences in the oil-and-gas sector. You can read the piece here. The nub of the account is that working conditions for welders in the sector are poor and are driving workers away. It is an interesting and well-written piece.
I flag it for a couple of reasons. One of the more tedious talking points of the Kenney government is that there is some kind of esteem gap between white-collar and blue-collar occupations. The gist of the narrative is that people (e.g., students, parents, teachers, and workers) think they are too good to do a blue-collar job (so basically it is a worker-blaming narrative, not all that different than equally ridiculous assertion that people no longer want to work).
Like most things Jason Kenney said as premier, there isn’t really any evidence that this esteem gap exists. (The two people I have been happiest to see in my life are an ER doc and a plumber, and not necessarily in that order.) Rather, this putative esteem-gap is just a dog-whistle pretext designed to justify increasing investment in skilled trades training and reduced investment in university education. Why would Kenney do that?
Well, Kenney’s actions as a federal minister suggest he often assists employers to minimize labour costs buy flooding the labour market with workers (think back to the temporary foreign worker deluge of 2008-12). Increasing the number of skilled trades people allows employers to suppress demands for better wages and working conditions because there is always a surplus of workers.
The first-person account of working in a welding shop in the oil-and-gas industry unintentionally highlights a number of structural reasons that workers may be reluctant to engage in blue-collar work (that have nothing to do with people thinking they are too good for that work):
Job demands: The author flags that the work is difficult, dangerous, and often entails working in unpleasant conditions at odd times. Workers are often unwilling or unable to work in these conditions. This has historically constrained the labour force and driven up wages. Corporations have responded in many ways to reduce labour costs, such as automation, off-shoring, and subcontracting work.
Insecurity: The oil-and-gas sector has organized work in ways that externalizes risk onto workers (in the form of layoffs and wage cuts) to maximize corporate profitability. The author notes that one new and very skilled worker had soured on the industry after three layoffs in five years. (This insecurity also a key barrier to apprentices completing their training, but note that Kenney’s training announcements never engage with this issue.)
Restructuring: The author notes that austerity, tax cuts, and rising energy prices had made him hopeful that his job would have more security. This didn’t happen because trickle-down economics (which is what he’s talking about) doesn’t work. Very crudely speaking, if you give wealthy individuals and corporations additional income (through tax cuts), they don’t create jobs with it: they just horde it. By contrast, policies that raise wages for low-income workers do create new jobs because low-income workers spend the money and that creates demand (and new jobs).
In the end, the author acknowledges that working in the industry used to provide a stable living but no longer does. Not surprisingly, he leaves the industry to teach high-school kids welding skills and all but two members of his original crew either quit or were laid off.
So, what can we learn from this:
Employers care about profit and treat workers instrumentally. If there is a way to increase profit and the effect is to make workers’ lives worse, employers will do so. This is particularly the case when there is a surplus of workers so the workers have little labour market power to exert.
Governments, especially conservatives ones, are typically happy to help employers create a loose labour market that worsens wages and working conditions. To stifle dissent about policies that are actually screwing the workers who comprise the bulk of the electorate, governments will happily invent or manipulate facts. No one wants to work. People think they are too good for blue-collar work. And so forth.
Workers are often unable or unwilling to incorporate this dynamics into their analysis of how the world works. Instead, they will cheer-lead policies that harm their interests (e.g., tax cuts and austerity that destroy the public services they depend upon) in the hope they will see greater stability or a modest wage increase. They will also adopt explanatory narratives that blame workers (people look down in the trades) while ignoring that workers may well be making rational and well-informed choices about what job options are best for them.
Even a modest amount of critical thinking raises some pretty profound questions about these narratives. Why, for example, might workers not be keen to take certain jobs? Is it because they are innately lazy or think too highly of themselves or are misinformed? Or is it because the jobs are organized in ways that make them, relatively speaking, difficult, unstable, and poorly paid, and thus workers don’t see them as a good choice? Are there impediments (such a childcare availability and shift work) that make it impossible or uneconomical for workers to take these jobs?
This kind of questioning is typically taught in the liberal arts, which is the exact kind of education that the Kenney government has aggressively defunded. That is probably not a coincidence.
Time magazine recently ran a short analysis of the cause of America’s shortage of truck drivers. Presently, supply chain shortages are compromising Christmas shopping (Bob clutches pearls) and, according to employers and the government, the key factor is a lack of qualified truck drivers. This same narrative operates in Alberta and has been met with truck driver-training initiatives by the province.
What is interesting, according to the article, is that there is no shortage of people qualified to drive big rigs or interested in the doing so. In fact, the labour market is so flooded, employers are able to pick and choose who to hire. Naturally, employers use this loose labour market to grind wages and working condition.
Not surprising, the quality of the jobs on offer is so poor that people quit. Annual turnover in big US trucking firms is an astounding 92%. The poor quality of jobs was triggered by the de-regulation of American trucking in the 1980s (thanks Reagan!).
I have not seen a similar study in Alberta. What I hear anecdotally is that the difficult nature of the job and low wages makes them unattractive jobs. Further, employers are often reluctant to hire new drivers (especially young ones) because of the high insurance costs associated with such drivers.
Spending tax dollars to train more drivers effectively subsidizes employer’s poor working conditions without necessarily improving the employment prospects of Albertans. Since the UCP has largely given up on evidence-based decision making and instead just shovels subsidies at their donor base (perhaps leavened with loosening the rules around hiring temporary foreign workers), I doubt we’ll see any change in this approach soon.
I'm not much for podcasts but the Alberta Advantage podcast (basically lefty political economy analysis out of Calgary) is often worth a listen. This episode provides an interesting analysis of the role of small business in society.
Specifically, the episode examine the valourization of small business and how that is used to run cover for capitalists. For example, when big business advocates for lower wages, they get pilloried as greedy. When small business advocates for lower wages, the conversation is almost always framed around helping "job creators" in the local community stay afloat.
The episode also interrogates the actual track record of small businesses with regard to workplace safety and wage theft (spoiler: lousy, often made worse by the precarious employment that they offer). And it explores how the media flips the narrative on things like wage theft by bosses to time theft by workers in order to obscure how shitty some employers are.
Finally, the episode (like most of their episodes) spends a few minutes calling out the provincial NDP for their opportunist boosterism around small business, generally to the detriment of the interests of workers.
The blog Organizing Work ran an interesting piece last week interrogating how worker organizing could have altered the trajectory of the story in A Christmas Carol (delightfully, using the Muppet version).
The post contains several astute observations, including that the workers manage to get a day off for Christmas from Scrooge by acting collectively and without the aid of supernatural forces.
What I enjoyed the most in the film was the overt shit-talking about the terrible character of the boss 9see the clip above). While it is easy to excuse a boss's behaviour as a function of structural pressures (e.g., the profit imperative), it is important not to lose sight of the fact that bosses have agency and could behave better than they do if they so wished.
The journal Labour/Le Travail recently published a very interesting case study about the experiences of workers at Casino Windsor. You can read the full text of the article here.
Casinos are often mooted as tools of economic diversification, providing relatively high-waged service industry jobs. This was a part of the back story of the opening of Casino Windsor and, initially, the casino did provide good jobs, particularly to women. Over time, though, economic pressure resulted in declining working conditions.
The workers at the casino faced labour immobility due to high unemployment and the absence of comparable wages elsewhere. This dynamic essentially creates a captive labour market, argues author Alissa Mazar, where the workers are stuck in their job. The employer knows this and uses aggressive disciplining to pressurize workers to perform.
Few options and fear of job loss has meant workers have internalizing the need to provide high quality customer service, despite poor treatment. Essentially, they exert discretionary effort in the hope that it will keep their livelihood intact and the employer uses this extra effort to reduce labour costs.
Mazar’s case study raises numerous questions about the value of casinos as economic engines, particularly when the state constraints the number of casinos and thus creates a captive labour force for the employer.
One of the most consistently interesting blogs about work is Organizing Work. Over the past few months, they have posted a couple of related articles about co-ops and unions. Co-operatives (i.e., member-owned operations) often have a lot of street cred with progressives.
Historically, co-ops featured prominently in the Antigonish Movement and on the prairies, where workers sought to break the monopolies they faced as producers and consumers. Modern versions (e.g., Mountain Equipment Co-op, various credit unions) keep this model alive.
Yet not everything is peachy-keen in the co-op movement. For example, UFCW 1400 members engaged in a protracted strike with the Saskatoon Co-op over the winter to push back against two-tier wage scales (i.e., lower wages for new workers). After six months, UFCW members narrowly accepted a deal that includes a two-tier wage system.
Organizing Work undertook some analysis of the track record of grocery co-ops in the US and Canada to see if the Saskatoon dispute was an aberration or was symptomatic of a broader pattern of union busting and worker exploitation.
The article is a worth a read but the upshot is that coops often treat workers poorly and engage in union busting. In part, this reflects that co-ops are intended to benefit their consumer members, not their workers.
Grinding workers wages is one strategy to keep prices down. There is also some interesting analysis in the article of how three inter-related entities seem to be pushing a more corporate form of co-op management.
Last week, I shared a preliminary analysis of the arguments and discursive strategies used by business lobby groups to oppose the minimum wage. This week, I’d like to wrap up this series by examining the narratives and strategies used by organized labour to support the increase.
I found 9 statements by the Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL). I selected the AFL because it is a labour central representing 29 unions tat, in turn, represent approximately 175,000 workers.
AFL spokespersons advanced a consistent narrative about increasing the minimum wage, asserting that raising the minimum wage:
did not cost jobs,
did increase spending and employment,
was not a youth issue but affected adults, specifically women and families
remedied poverty, and
was the subject of fear mongering by self-interested employers.
The AFL mostly employed very similar narratives and discursive strategies as government MLAs, relying primarily upon instrumental rationalization and moral evaluation. Two differences are of note. First, the AFL also used impersonal authorization when it used academic research to undercut claims that the minimum wage resulted in job losses:
There is a considerable and growing body of evidence showing that the negative economic effects of minimum wage increases are negligible, while the impact of lower-income people having more money in their pockets is quite considerable. The evidence ranges from a classic 1990 study by researchers David Card and Alan Krueger; a 2010 examination of fast-food restaurants; to the 2014 British Low Pay Commission, which concluded “minimum wages boost workers’ pay, but don’t harm employment.” (AFL, 2015, p. 1)
Second, AFL statements often aggressively attacked opponents of the minimum wage hike:
Predictably, Restaurants Canada launched a campaign today opposing Alberta’s plan to increase the minimum wage to $15 by 2018. Unfortunately with industry groups like Restaurants Canada it is never the time for meaningful increases to the minimum wage (AFL, 2016a, p. 1).
[Q:] Aren’t low wage employers just trying to keep their doors open and create opportunities for workers?
A: That’s what they want people to believe. But the track record of some of these employers and lobbyists suggests they’re much more interested in keeping wage low than in creating and maintaining jobs. These are the same guys who always say the sky is falling whenever any provincial government even whispers about increasing the minimum wage. And, in many cases, they’re the same people who made extensive use of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) to displace Canadians and keep wages artificially low. After years of focusing on self-interest, why should we believe they’re suddenly concerned about the public interest? (AFL, 2016b, p. 3)
While government MLAs and the AFL both used similar narratives about minimum wage increases discursive strategies, the difference in tone creates a sword (AFL) and shield (MLAs) dynamic. There is no clear evidence of coordination between the government and the AFL and this dynamic may simply reflect independent and rational communication choices by each party. The small number of statements in the dataset suggest that this analysis should be treated with caution.
My research project on this topic is now turning to analysis of the media coverage of Alberta’s minimum-wage increase—something I expect will take a few months to complete. Comments on this research are welcomed.
Last week, I shared some preliminary research exploring the narratives and discursive strategies used by opposition MLAs to oppose a minimum-wage increase. This week I’d like to share a preliminary analysis of 17 statements made by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB).
I chose the CFIB because it represents approximately 10,000 small-business owners in Alberta, has consistently opposed minimum-wage increases, and had an available record of statements I could analyze. CFIB spokespersons advanced a consistent narrative about increasing the minimum wage, asserting that raising the minimum wage:
was opposed by employers,
would cost jobs, particularly among teenagers,
was not supported by adequate evidence about its effect, and
was not an effective poverty reduction strategy.
CFIB spokespersons employed three main discursive strategies in which these narratives appeared. The CFIB theoretically rationalized its opposition to minimum-wage increases by citing job-loss projections it developed:
In the case of Alberta’s massive hike in the minimum wage rate from $10,20 to $15.00 (47 per cent increase) by 2018, this would put 51,700 to 200,690 jobs at risk in Alberta (Wong, 2015a, p. 1).
These projected job losses included both layoffs and foregone future hiring. These projections ultimately proved wildly inaccurate but were contrasted with the limited economic analyses that the government publicly provided:
Premier Notley stated that her aggressive minimum wage policy won’t kill jobs. Then show us the evidence (Ruddy, 2016, p. 1)
The CFIB also used its projections to assert minimum-wage increases were not effective poverty-reduction tools:
CFIB’s calculations show that minimum wage increases are not the best way to increase low income earners’ well being (Wong, 2015b, p. 2).
This assertion sits uneasily with the CFIB’s projections in the same report, which show the net income of workers in every provinces rose with a minimum wage increase.
The CFIB used public authorization in two ways in an effort for increase the salience of its views. First, the CFIB frames itself as speaking on behalf of small business owners, despite representing on about 10% of such businesses (CFIB, 2018). Second, it used surveys of its memberships to support its demands. These surveys also act as a cautionary tale about the impact of the minimum wage increase. The most common narrative associated with surveys is that minimum-age increases cost jobs:
A CFIB survey of 1040 Alberta business owners asked: Which of the following changes has your business already made as Alberta moves to a $15 an hour minimum wage? 55 percent have reduced to eliminated plans to hire new workers, 52 per cent have reduced of eliminated plans to hire young workers, 46 per cent raised prices, 43 per cent reduced overall staffing hours, ad 42 per cent have reduced the number of employees, to name just a few of the implications (Ruddy, 2018, p. 1).
Opposition MLAs and the CFIB both used similar narratives about minimum wage increases (e.g., job killer opposed by employers and ineffective at reducing poverty) and similar discursive strategies (theoretical rationalization, cautionary tales). The small number of statements in the dataset suggest that this analysis should be treated with caution.
Next week, we’ll conclude this series by looking at organized labour’s contribution to the minimum-wage debate.
Last week, I shared some preliminary research exploring the narratives and discursive strategies used by government MLAs to justify a minimum-wage increase. This week I’d like to share a preliminary analysis of 115 statements made by various flavours of conservative MLAs in the Legislation.
Opposition MLAs advanced a consistent narrative in the legislature about increasing the minimum wage, asserting that increases:
were opposed by employers,
would not reduce poverty,
would cause job losses, particularly for teenagers and low-wage workers, and
would cause prices to rise, which would harm other vulnerable groups such as seniors and the disabled.
Opposition MLAs employed three main discursive strategies to justify their opposition. The discursive strategy most frequently used by opposition MLAs in all four years was the cautionary tale. The narratives associated with this strategy was that raising the minimum wage were opposed by employers and would cause job losses:
Mr. Hunter: …I rise to talk about the people in Cardston-Taber-Warner that are concerned about the rising minimum wage. A local restaurant owner, Dan Brown, wrote me the other day. Dan has been running his restaurant for five and a half years, and he… is concerned about the impact minimum wage increases will have on youth employment. Dan is also very concerned about the impact the $15 minimum wage will have on his labour costs. He is faced with some tough choices. He can reduce hours of existing employees or not hire new staff. Dan doesn’t know how he would be able to afford to hire inexperienced staff. (2015.06.22, 128)
The second most frequently used discursive strategy was theoretical rationalization (i.e., research suggests X outcome). Specifically, opposition MLAs asserted that increasing the minimum wage would cause job losses and would not reduce poverty:
Mr. W. Anderson: …Stephen Gordon wrote a piece in Maclean’s [magazine] in 2013 discussing the theory being pushed by big labour that minimum wages hikes mean more jobs. In his survey of the literature, he found that there was no proof of it and that Canada, even more clearly than the U.S., has shown a clear relationship between wage hikes and job losses.
In addition, in the survey of the literature, he cites a peer-reviewed 2012 study that finds that, quote, our results highlight that, political rhetoric, notwithstanding, minimum wages are poorly targeted as an anti-poverty device and are, at best an exceedingly blunt instrument for dealing with poverty. (2015.06.24, 263-264).
The third most frequently used discursive strategy was impersonal authorization (i.e., using the authority of others to justify a position). This strategy saw opposition MLAs cite various sources of research to bolster the narrative that a minimum-wage increase would cause job losses, particularly for teenagers and low-wage workers
Mr. Kenney: …What do you think a 50 per cent increase in the minimum wage results in? Well, according to the Bank of Canada 60,000 job losses across the country. According to the C.D. Howe Institute 25,000 job losses in Alberta. Think about how – oh, my goodness – when New Democrats get on their moral high horse and pretend they have a monopoly on compassion, and then because union bosses tell them to, they bring in a policy that, according to the think tanks will kill 25,000 jobs for immigrants and youth. Where is the compassion for those who lost their jobs, Mr. Speaker? There is none. There’s no regard. (2018.04.05, 433).
There is research both supporting and refuting this assertion, although the balance refutes it. Interestingly, government MLAs made little effort to counter research-based criticism. Instead, government MLAs increasingly focusing on moral evaluation. This may reflect that opposition MLAs cited research that agrees with a commonsensical (albeit not necessarily correct) understanding of wages and employment.
Impersonal authorization was not, however, a universally successful strategy for opposition MLAs. Early in the dataset, there were numerous instances where opposition MLAs referred to statements and research by various employer lobby groups (e.g., Chambers of Commerce, Canadian Restaurant and Food Association) to attack increases. The use of this kind of data declined after tis 2016 exchange between conservative MLA Ric McIver and government MLA Maria Fitzpatrick:
Mr. McIver: …On top of that, businesses across this province, the restaurants’ association, many chambers of commerce, and business groups have almost universally… [are] dead set against this government’s minimum wage policy to artificially drive up the minimum wage to $15 an hour in a very accelerated way. …
Ms. Fitzpatrick: …Now I had a little experience with the chamber of commerce in my community of Lethbridge. When the minimum wage came out, they talked about how much it was going to cost. …The chair of the chamber of commerce told me that it was going to cost $86,000 for this business in one year because of this increase. Okay. So $86,000 is 86,000 hours since there’s a $1 increase…. To get $86,000 you’d need 41 full-time employees working 40 hours a week, and that was not the case. In fact, I got the correct figures and went back to the chamber of commerce, and she said: no, no, no; I think that was over the few years. I said: but you told me it was over one year. (2016,04.20, 688-689).
Overall, opposition MLAs relied most heavily on the cautionary-tale strategy, asserting that minimum-wage increases would cause job losses. They also sought to theoretically rationalize opposition by using research to counter government narratives that increases alleviated poverty. Research—by academics and interest groups—were also employed using an impersonal authorization strategy.
Looking at both opposition and government discursive strategies, an interesting dynamic emerges. As opposition MLAs increasingly focus on asserting job losses, government MLAs decline to debate this (high-contestable) assertion. Instead, they increasingly focus on the moral argument that increases alleviate poverty and provide dignity and fairness. Opposition MLAs respond by doubling down on research-based arguments—carefully avoiding engaging with the moral argument that government MLAs articulate.
Next week, we’ll look at the business lobby’s contribution to the minimum-wage debate.
This week’s installment of Labour & Pop Culture is “Soup is Good Food” by the Dead Kennedys. This 1985 songs speaks to the disposability of labour in contemporary capitalism.
We're sorry But you're no longer needed Or wanted or even cared about here Machines can do a better job than you And this is what you get for asking questions
Recorded in 1985, the song rings true today, particularly with the deskilling or elimination of jobs due to automation. Interestingly, it also examines how government’s manipulate economic data to hide the real state of the world:
We're sorry, you'll just have to leave Unemployment runs out after just six weeks How does it feel to be a budget cut? You're snipped, you no longer exist
Your number's been purged From our central computer So we can rig the facts And sweep you under the rug See our chart? Unemployment's going down If that ruins your life that's your problem
Having been through periods of layoffs in two different jobs (and seeing my own employer recently propose reducing further the notice period for layoffs), this verse rings particularly true:
Now how does it feel (We don't need you any more) To be shit out our ass And thrown in the cold like a piece of trash (We don't need you any more)
And morale is down, you say?
Apologies for the lack of a video—punks don’t go for that MTV stuff.
We're sorry But you're no longer needed Or wanted or even cared about here Machines can do a better job than you And this is what you get for asking questions
The unions agree Sacrifices must be made Computers never go on strike To save the working man You've got to put him out to pasture
Looks like we'll have to let you go Doesn't it feel fulfilling to know That you the human being are now obsolete And there's nothing in hell we'll let you do about it
Soup is good food (We don't need you any more) You made a good meal (We don't need you any more)
Now how does it feel (We don't need you any more) To be shit out our ass And thrown in the cold like a piece of trash
We're sorry, you'll just have to leave Unemployment runs out after just six weeks How does it feel to be a budget cut? You're snipped, you no longer exist
Your number's been purged From our central computer So we can rig the facts And sweep you under the rug See our chart? Unemployment's going down If that ruins your life that's your problem
Soup is good food (We don't need you any more) You made a good meal (We don't need you any more)
Now how does it feel (We don't need you any more) To be shit out our ass And thrown in the cold like a piece of trash
We're sorry, we hate to interrupt But it's against the law to jump off this bridge You'll just have to kill yourself somewhere else A tourist might see you and we wouldn't want that
I'm just doing my job, you know, so say uncle And we'll take you to the mental health zoo Force feed you mind melting chemicals Til' even the outside world looks great
In hi-tech science research labs It costs too much to bury all the dead The mutilated disease injected Surplus rats who can't be used anymore
So they're dumped, with no minister present In a spiraling corkscrew dispose all unit Ground into sludge and flushed away Aw geez!
We don't need you any more We don't need you any more
Soup is good food (We don't need you any more) You made a good meal (We don't need you any more)
Now how does it feel (We don't need you any more) To be shit out our ass And thrown in the cold like a piece of trash (We don't need you any more)
We know how much you'd like to die (We don't need you any more) We joke about it on our coffee breaks (We don't need you any more) But we're paid to force you to have a nice day (We don't need you any more) In the wonderful world we made just for you
"Poor rats", we human rodents chuckle At least we get a dignified cremation At yet, at 6 o'clock tomorrow morning It's time to get up and go to work
This week’s installment of Labour & Pop Culture is “Out of Work” by Gary U.S. Bonds. Written by Bruce Springsteen, this song revived Bonds’ career and the lyrics remain surprisingly (and disappointingly) relevant 36 years later.
8 A.M., I'm up and my feet beating on the sidewalk
Down at the unemployment agency, all I get's talk
I check the want ads but there just ain't nobody hiring
What's a man supposed to do when he's down and
Out of work
I need a job, I'm out of work
I'm unemployed, I'm out of work
I need a job, I'm out of work
I go to pick my girl up
Her name is Linda Brown
Her dad invites me in
He tells me to sit down
The small talk that we're making
Is going pretty smooth
But then he drops a bomb
"Son, what d'ya do?"
I'm out of work
I need a job, I'm out of work
I'm unemployed, I'm out of work
I need a job, I'm out of work
Yeah, yeah, yeah
Hey, Mr. President, I know you got your plans
You're doing all you can now to aid the little man
We got to do our best to whip that inflation down
Maybe you got a job for me just driving you around
(I'm out of work)
These tough times, they're enough
To make a man lose his mind
(I'm out of work)
Up there you got a job but down here below
I'm out of work
I need a job, I'm out of work
I'm unemployed, I'm out of work
I need a job, I'm out of work
Ooh, I'm out of work
I'm out of work
I'm out of work
I'm out of work
I'm out of work
I'm out of work
I'm out of work
I'm out of work
This week’s installment of Labour & Pop Culture is “Rain on the Scarecrow” by John Cougar. I recently watched a really off-putting documentary on John Mellencamp on Netflix (Plain Spoken) and this was one of the songs that played in the background.
It is written from the perspective of a farmer about to lose the family farm due to mounting debt and the cost-price squeeze. Overall, a pretty haunting song about farming as we head into the harvest season.
Scarecrow on a wooden cross blackbird in the barn Four hundred empty acres that used to be my farm I grew up like my daddy did my grandpa cleared this land When I was five I walked the fence while grandpa held my hand
Rain on the scarecrow blood on the plow This land fed a nation this land made me proud And son I'm just sorry there’s no legacy for you now Rain on the scarecrow blood on the plow Rain on the scarecrow blood on the plow
The crops we grew last summer weren't enough to pay the loans Couldn't buy the seed to plant this spring and the farmers bank foreclosed Called my old friend schepman up to auction off the land He said john its just my job and I hope you understand Hey calling it your job ol hoss sure dont make it right But if you want me to Ill say a prayer for your soul tonight
And grandmas on the front porch swing with a Bible in her hand Sometimes I hear her singing take me to the promised land When you take away a mans dignity he cant work his fields and cows There'll be blood on the scarecrow blood on the plow Blood on the scarecrow blood on the plow
Well there's ninety-seven crosses planted in the courthouse yard Ninety-seven families who lost ninety-seven farms I think about my grandpa and my neighbors and my name and some nights I feel like dying like that scarecrow in the rain
Rain on the scarecrow blood on the plow This land fed a nation this land made me so proud And son I'm just sorry they're just memories for you now Rain on the scarecrow blood on the plow Rain on the scarecrow blood on the plow
This week’s installment of Labour & Pop Culture looks at “Death to my Hometown” by Bruce Springsteen. This Celtic-infused (and very angry) song was part of Springsteen’s 2012 album Wrecking Ball, which examined the impact of the 2008 recession on Americans.
The song's premise is that economic mis-management is a form of violence, with effects analogous to war. He particularly notes that the impersonal nature of the economic system means that it is hard to identify and punish those responsible for economic crimes:
Send the robber barons straight to hell The greedy thieves who came around And ate the flesh of everything they found Whose crimes have gone unpunished now Who walk the streets as free men now
Protest songs like this one do a nice job of capturing frustration and giving it voice. What this song lacks any sort of call to action (excepting the vague “be ready when they come” and "send them straight to hell") that would change the underlying political economy that allowed this economic violence to be perpetrated on the working class.
Well, no cannon ball did fly, no rifles cut us down No bombs fell from the sky, no blood soaked the ground No powder flash blinded the eye No deathly thunder sounded But just as sure as the hand of God They brought death to my hometown They brought death to my hometown
Now, no shells ripped the evening sky No cities burning down No army stormed the shores for which we’d die No dictators were crowned I awoke on a quiet night, I never heard a sound The marauders raided in the dark And brought death to my hometown They brought death to my hometown
They destroyed our families, factories And they took our homes They left our bodies on the plains The vultures picked our bones
So, listen up my sonny boy, be ready when they come For they’ll be returning sure as the rising sun Now get yourself a song to sing And sing it ’til you’re done Sing it hard and sing it well Send the robber barons straight to hell The greedy thieves who came around And ate the flesh of everything they found Whose crimes have gone unpunished now Who walk the streets as free men now
They brought death to our hometown, boys Death to our hometown Death to our hometown, boys Death to our hometown
In February, the Labourer’s International Union of North America (LiUNA) released a report entitled “The impact of Canada’s migrant worker program on the construction labour force in British Columbia, 2015-2016”.
This report examines the construction industry’s use of temporary foreign workers (TFWs) as well as foreign nationals who entered Canada under the international mobility programs (IMPs) of various free trade agreements that Canada signed. (Sorry I can't seem to find a link to the report itself).
In 2014, the Harper Conservative government clamped down on TFW entries in response to public outrage about exploitation of the workers and employer abuse of the system. At the same time, they left the IMP stream alone (the government cannot unilaterally change bilateral free trade agreements) but noted that the IMPs were workers in high-skill occupations. The feds have done no research on whether these claims are true.
LUINA found that there were 1240 IMPs working in the BC construction industry in 2015 (roughly 2.6% of all IMPs in BC). That same year, there were 1260 TFWs employed in the construction industry (about 8.5% of TFWs in BC). The number of TFWs entering the construction industry is off sharply from the peak in 2008. These numbers do not include undocumented workers.
Over time, what appears to be happening is that employers are reducing their TFW hires and replacing them with IMPs hires (reflecting changes in program rules). LiUNA argues that the use of migrant workers is loosening the construction labour market (resulting in lower wages and fewer job opportunities for Canadians). It also suggests that government claims the IMPs cannot (or are unlikely to) work in the construction sector are inaccurate.
Something I was surprisingly unable to find in the report was the overall number of workers in construction occupations in BC. This information would help contextualize the potential impact of the ~2500 migrant workers on the labour market. Using StatsCan CANSIM Table 282-0153, it looks like the 2015 number was about 250,000. Assuming this number is comparable to the LiUNA data, that suggests migrant worker comprise 1% of workers in construction occupations.
While certainly 2500 additional workers may create some distortion in the labour market, I’m not sure this number is really all that significant. Not including this important context in the report feels a bit like LiUNA was spinning their conclusions to make more of them than they warrant.
LiUNA does (sort of) address the magnitude of the impact in their press release when they say:
Some people argue the number of migrant construction workers in BC is small compared to the construction labour force. But you do not need thousands of migrant workers to have a significant impact on specific building trades involved in major public and private sector construction projects as it supresses wages and displaces qualified Canadians.
So they clearly have turned their mind to the issue and the omission is likely intentional. Now, there is probably some truth to their statement and kudos to the LiUNA for doing this kind of policy research. But not providing the context of their findings undermines the credibility of the report and its recommendations.
One of the challenges that a bargaining team faces at the table is convincing the other side to accept a proposal. While it is always possible to threaten a work stoppage (i.e., a strike or a lockout) to force a proposal on the other side, it is more common to engage in log rolling (exchanging agreement on your X for agreement on their Y).
Sometimes, it is possible to simply convince the other side that a proposal is their own best interest. For example, employers might seek wage freezes by arguing that the organization cannot afford a cost-of-living increase. The implicit threat here is that a cost-of-living adjustment will come with job losses due to a lack of funds.
Athabasca University’s current negotiation with its faculty association is a good example of this. The employer has proposed a two-year agreement with no cost of living increases. This is consistent with the political direction set by the government and that other public-sector unions have accepted.
The difficulty that the union side is going to have with this proposal is two-fold: (1) taking a zero means salaries fall behind inflation (i.e., buying power is reduced) and (2) there is no good evidence that university is in serious financial distress.
The recent salary disclosure (this data is from 2017) suggests that there is lots of money for administrators. The ten-best paid administrators who are outside of the bargaining unit raked in a total of $3.3m in overall compensation.
The university’s financial statements also reveal that it has recorded surpluses every year since 2013 (excepting a tiny deficit in 2016). The university’s rhetoric that surpluses reflect “one-time savings that cannot be relied upon” sits awkwardly with this long-term trend. And recent enrolment data is showing a 15% spike in undergraduate registrations (more than half of AU's funding comes from registrations so this is a big cash-flow increase).
Once bargaining gets down to brass tacks in the coming months, it will be interesting to see how committed Athabasca University’s bargaining team is to getting two zeroes and the strategies it uses to achieve those.
Given the facts the university is stuck with, I’d say that persuasion is unlikely to be effective. This leaves log rolling, threats of a lockout, or abandoning its proposed wage freeze altogether.
This week’s installment of Labour & Pop Culture is “Shackled and Drawn” by Bruce Springsteen. This song has a bit of a gospel feel to it and is from Springsteen’s 2012 album Wrecking Ball. The album tells the stories of people whose lives were destroyed by the recession.
You can read the lyrics lots of ways—my first thought was it was about prison labour. But, on reflection, I think it uses being shackled as a metaphor for the debt and limited prospects of the working class.
Gambling man rolls the dice, workingman pays the bill It’s still fat and easy up on banker’s hill Up on banker’s hill, the party’s going strong Down here below we’re shackled and drawn
The live version above seems to stray from the studio version but the content s all there—just re-arranged.
Gray morning light spits through the shade Another day older, closer to the grave Closer to the grave and come the dawn I woke up this morning shackled and drawn
Shackled and drawn, shackled and drawn Pick up the rock son, carry it on I’m trudging through the dark in a world gone wrong I woke up this morning shackled and drawn
I always loved the feel of sweat on my shirt Stand back son and let a man work Let a man work, is that so wrong I woke up this morning shackled and drawn
Shackled and drawn, shackled and drawn Pick up the rock son, carry it on What’s a poor boy to do in a world gone wrong I woke up this morning shackled and drawn
Freedom son’s a dirty shirt The sun on my face and my shovel in the dirt A shovel in the dirt keeps the devil gone I woke up this morning shackled and drawn
Shackled and drawn, shackled and drawn Pick up the rock son, carry it on What’s a poor boy to do but keep singing his song I woke up this morning shackled and drawn
Gambling man rolls the dice, workingman pays the bill It’s still fat and easy up on banker’s hill Up on banker’s hill, the party’s going strong Down here below we’re shackled and drawn
Shackled and drawn, shackled and drawn Pick up the rock son, carry it on We’re trudging through the dark in a world gone wrong I woke up this morning shackled and drawn
Shackled and drawn, shackled and drawn Pick up the rock son, carry it on What’s a poor boy to do but keep singing his song I woke up this morning shackled and drawn
This week’s installment of Labour & Pop Culture is “Mining for Gold”, most famously performed by the Cowboy Junkies. The very haunting song speaks to the human cost associated with mining (specifically hard rock mining).
This song is timely given the death of Barrack Gold founder Peter Munk at the end of March. Munk was widely lauded as a visionary business leader, with lofty ambitions and visionary goals. A look at the record of Barrack Gold is sobering.
And as the company’s mining empire expanded, so too did the social criticism, with accusations of abuse at mines in Papua New Guinea and Tanzania drawing protests and reprimands.
But Munk was unapologetic, and held fast in his convictions that the company was overall a source of good as part of a globalized world of capitalism.
“Someone has got to create and generate wealth,” Munk said at his last annual general meeting in 2014.
What the Toronto Sun is avoiding talking about in detail are the gang rapes and shooting of workers at various Barrack mines in the developing world. But at least he generated shareholder value.
The Beaverton pretty much nailed it with its headline “Barrick Gold entombs fifty foreign miners in Peter Munk’s pyramid so he’ll have workers to abuse in afterlife”
“He was such a generous man,” said a Barrick Gold VP, about the ex-chairman whose company is responsible for dozens of atrocities throughout the world. “He would insist on Barrick Gold giving our miners more violence, more heavy metals in their groundwater, more sexual assault. It’s only fair that in return these fifty men be forced to accompany him to paradise.” …
In addition to Munk’s compulsory entourage, he will also be buried with a thousand barrels of industrial cyanide so he can poison the hereafter’s freshwater sources, a bulldozer for tearing down the homes of heaven’s indigenous population, and a few hundred million dollars in case he needs to bribe God to look the other way.
“I thought Peter was crazy when he said he could get away with killing hundreds of people if he also dug up a shiny rock once in awhile,” said one longtime friend and member of the board of directors. “Boy is my face red, not to mention my hands!”
We are miners, hard rock miners To the shaft house we must go Pour your bottles on our shoulders We are marching to the slow
On the line boys, on the line boys Drill your holes and stand in line 'til the shift boss comes to tell you You must drill her out on top
Can't you feel the rock dust in your lungs? It'll cut down a miner when he is still young Two years and the silicosis takes hold and I feel like I'm dying from mining for gold
Last week, I spent a day in Banff at the AUPE labour school. Chatting with union members, activists, and staff, several commented on the Alberta’s 2018 Speech from the Throne. This passage caught everyone’s attention:
The people who work across our public sector are integral to the services Albertans rely on. We have already reached practical agreements with no raises and better job stability with many labour partners, including teachers and nurses, and a tentative agreement has been reached with our allied health professionals, such as paramedics, lab technologists and X-ray technologists.
The government has sought (and achieved) wage freezes as a way of reducing the cost of government. As a result, most public-sector workers’ wages will decline by the value of inflation for the next two years. For some workers (such as teachers), this will mean they have taken wage freezes in five of the six most recent years.
Wage freezes are often unpopular because they can have big implications for workers. Continuing with the teacher example, for example, these workers saw the real-dollar value of their salaries decline by more than 7% over the past six years due to un-addressed inflation. These losses affect their wages forever (due to lost compounding) and there is also a knock-on hit to their pensions.
Unions undoubtedly make gains when taking zeros (e.g., workload limits, better contract language) but forgone wages represent a significant transfer of money from workers to the government. Essentially, workers are subsidizing the operation of public services.
Several workers in Banff went further, noting that what the New Democrats (like the Tories before them) were doing was taking money from workers and using it to subsidize rich people and corporations (through income and corporate tax rates that are inadequate to pay for public services).
This was a pretty astute observation (many of my PhD-holding co-workers struggle to grasp this dynamic). And it raises interesting political questions. For example, what is the ND’s electoral thinking behind telling your supporters that “you gotta take a freeze so I can get re-elected”?
Probably it goes something like “you can be mad, but Jason Kenney will be worse so who you gonna vote for in 2019”? Now certainly Jason Kenney would be far worse for public servants. Personally, I loathe him.
I also loathe Dracula. But I don’t think it follows that, just because I hate vampires, I’m necessarily going to be a fan of Frankenstein’s monster. ("Better dead than undead!") And I’m certainly not going to cheer as it throws the public service into the lake to drown.
The anger about what amount to a betrayal of public-sector workers was palpable. I wonder how it will affect the ND’s electoral support come election time. Will public-sector workers fall in line? Or, will they be pissed enough to get out their torches and pitchforks?
